An interview about listening skills

Listen to the English teacher talk about listening to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Presenter: So, today's expert teacher is Gabriella, a university English teacher from Leeds. Gabriella, hi and thanks for joining us today.

Gabriella: Thanks for having me!

Presenter: So, I have to confess today's topic is something I am really bad at: listening. Most people say speaking is the most stressful part of learning a new language but, for me, with my B1 German, speaking isn't so bad. At least I'm in control of it. But listening … woah … people speak so fast and it's like my brain just shuts down. Am I just really strange and bad at listening? Tell me, honestly, I can take it.

Gabriella: No, you're not strange. In fact, it's really common. You know, in exams most people do pretty well in speaking compared with listening. Of course, exams are a different situation from real life because in an exam you can't ask for something to be repeated or explained. You usually have just one or maybe two opportunities to listen to the dialogue and then it's gone.

Presenter: Right, but in real life I feel stupid always saying, 'Sorry, can you repeat that, please?', especially if I still don't understand even when they repeat it. And people out there listening, I hope you don't do this – quite often the person just repeats what they said equally as fast and I'm still lost!

Gabriella: They do, don't they? In real life, you've got two strategies. One is to pretend to understand and get out of the conversation as fast as you can.

Presenter: Yep, sounds familiar!

Gabriella: But, obviously that's not going to help if it's a conversation with high stakes. It might have important consequences. I mean, if you're just chatting with a stranger at the bus stop, it doesn't matter. But imagine you're at a government office or a bank, trying to find out what paperwork you need to get your ID or open a bank account. What can you do then?

Presenter: I hope you've got the answer, Gabriella, because I'm coming out in a cold sweat just thinking about either of those situations!

Gabriella: The other strategy is to summarise what they said.

Presenter: But how can you do that if you didn't understand what they said?

Gabriella: Ah, well, you only start the summary, so you might say, in German in your case, 'OK, so the first thing I have to do is …?' and make it a question. Or, for example, 'And which office is that again?' Break it down into smaller questions and the other person will naturally start answering them. That way you're controlling the conversation a bit more.

Presenter: I get you ...

Task 1

TrueOrFalse_MjMzNjg=.xml

Task 2

Matching_MjMzNjk=.xml

Discussion

What do you do to help with listening?

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Worksheet79.35 KB

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Language level

B1 Intermediate

Sometimes I listen to music or watch movies from different anglo-countries because has multiple accents and vocabularies that I have to understand.

Listening is dificult also because of the diferent accent.

I'm suffering from listening skills, but I have many months practice listening to BBC radio and lyrics, i feel good progress, of course I take the advice from this audio and other experiences in comments to be excellent in listening skills. Thanks.

I think listening part when I learning English is the most difficult part. Of course because everybody who talk to me using English was a rapper

I think to learn English need to comprehensively, so I didn't particularly improve the listening part, but change some behavior is really useful like I will watch English TV and listen podcast replace to music, this tiny changing bring benefits to me and I feel my English have tremendously improved.

What I do to help listening includes the following: - Being sensitive. - Summarizing conversation and, - Asking questions on unclear area.

I think listening skill is so hard for me. I can't understand the content of any conversations if they speak too fast. So i can't summary it. Actually i try to improve listening skill by practicing in listening exam of britishcouncil.org and listening to English song. Personally i think its really useful and excited to improve all skill in English. For this dialogue, maybe its quite easy but i still can't hear clearly all of this. I'm really afraid of listening test. I hope that i will continue to try to improve my listening skill and i can listen better

I listen to English songs and radio even I don't understand them I keep on. I think I am pretty good at listening. I can summarize the main point. But speaking, I am really bad at it. I know what I want to ask or say but the words, they never come out. And I construct the wrong sentences when I speak. The result is, I am afraid of speaking. The things that I am doing are listening and reading. I write a few but no speaking. Any advices to improve my speaking???

Hello BlaiChan

The best thing to do is of course practise speaking with other people. Even if they are not native speakers, it's still useful.

I'd also encourage you to choose sentences from this page that you think would be useful in your speaking, either because they are difficult to pronounce or because they could be useful in different conversations. For example, 'Yep, sounds familiar!' or something similar could be useful in many places.

Practise saying that phrase over and over again until it's easy to say. Check your pronunciation with the recording. Then do the same thing with the other phrases or sentences you've chosen. Do this a couple of times a day for several days, until you can remember and say them all confidently.

Write them down in a notebook and then choose another set of sentences from another listening and follow the same procedure. Gradually, you will build up your speaking fluency and vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation and listening.

Good luck and let us know if that works for you!

All the best

Kirk

The LearnEnglish Team

You should find your speaking practice partner and talk with him/her regularly.Even though you don't have one,don't worry.Just speak with yourself in front of the mirror and find tongue twisted technique programs on YouTube or Google(maybe any search engines) and practise it to speak more fluently I'm also a beginner in speaking just like you.I trust we'll reach the level what we want to slowly and steadily.Maybe my advice help you properly.